Frankly, I love my Linux desktops better than any Mac or Windows nonsense. I find Windows's gui insanely bad and frustratingly limited. You guys who don't like 'em can go away if you like, no one will miss you anyway. I like all of them, Unity, Gnome3 and KDE4 just fine. I think they are different but all great in their own ways. Gnome3 and Unity might not be popular with some people but they are innovative. Whether you like that innovation or not is your own opinion.

KDE4 gets solidly better and better with each release. So some Dolphin developer decides to throw a hissy fit and leave, honestly, whatever. I personally have not seen this great exodus of Linux users to OSX, nor do I hear "normal" non-fanboi people fawn over OSX all that much.

Lets get Linus to try it on government next!

Or if you live in an anti-freedom socialist wasteland like Canada, your worthless PAL! :)

I would go see Cowboys of the Caribbean.

Because otherwise, Smartphones and Tablets really are getting out of control.

I thought -- and still do -- think its stupid to have a speech interface for a phone. I mean you look stupid talking to a robot woman on your phone. The last thing I want to do is start dancing in front of my phone.

"Give me a sec, I have to do the shuffle to unlock my phone, and then the achy-breaky to open my email."

I'm actually pretty happy with smart phone interfaces these days, just the way things are..

Now cement is dangerous? "experts" are worried!

OK, Iran is an evil sexist country with a lot of political problems being handled poorly. Not a country I'd ever live in.

But guys? Can you really afford another war? You hardly finished in Iraq - you'll be doing it again in twenty years. You're doing worse in Afghanistan!

Let them have the damn cement, it sounds like they could really use it anyway. So could we, actually.

Just let this one go, try to devise a long term plan to improve relations over time - its has to be cheaper and frankly couldn't be worst then ranting about ways you'll kill them even if they do hide in these possible bunkers.

Its a bit insane sounding. Imagine being from Iran reading these paranoid threats?

Canadian for the record, but we are generally loyal to even our loud, obnoxious, untrustworthy friends to the south.

Why not just setup a VPN real fast with someones DD-WRT router. I did this at a job that had a really obnoxious content filtering thing that actually prevented me from doing my job. I just vpn'd to home, but you probably have at least one friend in town that has something good enough for you to work with. Even a shitty VPN will do, since your not trying to protect anything so much as evade things.

You sound a bit like a nasty little troll here, but I'll reply anyway.

Because they work fine in Linux, thats why. Are you talking about OpenGL performance? Well, not so much. But otherwise I've had very little trouble with AMD graphics in Linux. There is more to this than whats immediately obvious anyway. At the time, I worked at a local computer store and I got laptops for cost, well, at the time nVidia's laptop graphics where total shit and the ones with AMD's where far better laptops in general. So I picked the best one out of the choices available to me, and that was what was available.

And, seriously, don't tell me nVidia's graphics drivers don't have a shit tonne of problems too. I know they do, because I've another laptop with a nVidia in it and its actually more of a pain in the ass for me.

Let me also touch upon the first comment here. As a MLZ, the difference between nVidia's bullshit proprietary drivers and AMD's bullshit proprietary drivers is pretty much zilch. I'll go for the functionality first, sure, but they are both proprietary and in that regard suck equally. Actually using the Open Source drivers for my AMD now at the recommendation of an above poster -- I wasn't aware they had progressed this far actually -- I've got no proprietary drivers now. So I'm actually quite happy with my AMD graphics choice.

Don't agree? Well, those are your opinions.

Actually. Your right. I'm running ArchLinux here..

I removed the catalyst drivers and installed the radeon driver... a few desktop effects don't work (such as wobbly windows) but the important ones that I actually care about work just fine. Video seems to play fine. Interesting! I had to tweak my monitor detection script a bit (xrandr seems to call displays differently according to the driver) but it all works fine. The KMS looks much better with my bootsplash too.

Maybe this doesn't matter? :)

The problem comes in with the fact that the open source drivers don't support everything. I seem to be in a real minority -- I really use Linux for all my desktop stuff, except playing the odd game. All my music, movies, everything I do from my linux laptop generally. The open source drivers won't allow me to do all the stuff that I do -- mainly, I won't be able to watch high def movies -- no hardware decoding support. There probably never will be either, without using catalyst. Do not also forget that since I'm on a laptop, I've got concerns regarding my power usage too on occasion, and the open source drivers consume a lot more juice. So the open source drivers *I would much rather use otherwise* don't support all the features that I use frequently. So this is bad for me, at least. My laptop isn't old, either -- its video card is a Mobility Radeon 5870, still pretty spiffy if you ask me.

Also, the desktop effects do more than just look pretty, a number of handy features for organizing windows and seeing what apps you have running require it.

So yeah, I just can't see this making AMD finally bring their drivers into the last century. Speaking as a Militant Linux Zealot who aggressively hates and seeks the destruction of everyone who doesn't wholly agree with me -- The linux desktop numbers are fairly low, I personally think they are higher than most people think -- but thats still a low number. Then cut that into a third or so which is the KDE desktop people. Thats one third of a small number ... I doubt AMD gives a shit. I see what the developer is saying here, but it seems that his choices are 1) Irritate a lot of users who use AMD graphics, probably lose a number of them who use the catalyst features, 2) Continue to support code for the sake of AMD being kind of a shit company.

I'd rather not get screwed by this, so I hope he continues to support GL1 for now, and maybe we can find another way to push AMD into updating their drivers because I don't think he'll get the response from them that he thinks he will.

Eh? What are you talking about? We've been storing the damn things for you yanks for decades now.

This happened in Canada too, with Mark Emory.

Our Government shipped out him nice and proper. Its illegal to do that in Canada, according to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but no one here is actually read that interesting little document. At least in the US, people have heard of the Constitution.

Er, what?

We do not have greater rights in Canada, not by a very long stretch. The only thing that keeps Canadians safe from our government is the fact that our government doesn't seem to actually do anything. At all. Except absorb tax money.

We don't even have a right to bear arms in this country, we don't have any rights to property, our courts and entire legal system is a complete joke... The police are completely above reproach and are entirely off the hook, our police chiefs lie publically and nothing ever happens to them.

This whole country is totally fucked, its just somehow stays somehow working because neither us or the government gives a shit.

As a Canadian, I am very jealous of a lot of the freedoms many American states have. Not all of them are any good, but there are states that are far, far more free than Canada.

Well, is that a fact, though?

Also, even if so, that doesn't actually change anything -- because what you are talking about are lobby groups, not scientific researchers. Lobby groups always make a tonne of cash, but take a good look at the number of environmental organizations that are actually lobby groups, there are a great many of them and they all appear to be well funded. Its easy to say, "oh look, this climate change skeptic got paid a bunch.." but look at the other way, entire pro-climate change organizations get massively funded as well.

Let be clear here, I never said that pro-climate change people are "faking data" -- you just made that up, I never said it, and I don't even believe that. What I'm saying is that they have data showing something, and that they seed models with that data and that I doubt those models are as accurate as they believe they are. The only way to actually tell the accuracy of those models is to wait and see what happens.

If you are going to fake data for money, you should at least make the attempt look believable, so yes, you would go and chill out somewhere cold for a little bit even if you just made the numbers up.

Finally, "science" means "testable claims". "weird science denying crap" seems to have nothing to do with anything I've said. Climate research does not turn up a lot of short-term testable claims, and that's the problem with this whole issue, is that actually testing these theories is extremely difficult.

This is a funny numbers game. CO2 is far from the worst greenhouse gas, so all these people posting their reactions about Americans and their big suv's, cars whatever, need to look more closely at which gases cause the most greenhouse effects, and where these gases come from.

You can fit me into the "greenhouse deniers" if you like, but I'm suspicious of pretty much all the data that is surrounding this issue -- there is too much money to be made on "popular" science like this for there to be any real hope of getting sound scientific data right now...

I've also yet to hear anyone make a reasonable sounding proposal to make any positive changes, its always up in the air stuff like "We all need to hold hands and plant trees and drive less" -- that's absurd. Lowering pollution is a good idea whatever the effects on temperature so I'm all for this goal, but to actually get to the point of seriously damaging the economy and lives we've all come to like living isn't going to happen and shouldn't. These are scientific issues and probably have scientific solutions.

People seem to want impossible things on this issue. Hippies are an illogical group of people who work solely in knee-jerk reactions and boogey-man scare tactics, they just complain without making much sense. Coal power bad, but nuclear is bad too! Damn, these goes our safest and best way to generate power. It all has to be hippie-power, hydro and solar. Yeah, well, if that worked then why wouldn't they use it, they can fleece us on power bills with solar or hydro just as easily as coal or nuke.

I don't see a lot of logic and reason with this entire issue.